Jan 24
History.org has developed electronic fieldtrips that look awesome. Previously, you had to part of a registered school, but now have special prices for homeschool families. Check out their schedule of events at:
Electronic fieldtrips for homeschoolers:
http://www.history.org/history/teaching/eft/eft_upcoming.cfm
Aug 24
Sometimes finding exactly what you want for homeschool curriculum is frustrating, not to mention time consuming. Aside from hopping around to garage sales and curriculum fairs, there are some mega deals to be found online. The trick is to find them! Half.com and Ebay are both owned by the same company, but are two very different websites but both offer treasures to be found. However, there are some VERY important points to remember.
Ebay
Ebay.com can be intimidating if you have never used it, and there are a surprising number of people that haven’t – for that very reason. Registering for an account is extremely easy, and takes no time at all. Finding what you want isn’t too hard, but there are a few things to watch out for:
This is a new tool I finally figured out so you could easily see what homeschool curriculum was available on Ebay:
Half.com
Half.com isn’t a bidding community like Ebay, but you will still want to look at who you are buying from and avoid questionable sellers. Half.com is very similar to Amazon, just a little cheaper on the shipping charges, and a little less protection from fraud. At Half, when you buy the book, a standard shipping amount ($3.49 for standard, more for expedited or international) is automatically added, and you can expect your book within a week or two.
Both Ebay and Half.com are excellent for finding good deals on homeschool curriculum or textbooks, and have policies in place to help you if something still goes wrong. It’s sort of like like online garage sale-ing!
Find homeschool curriculum at Half.com
Find homeschool curriculum at Ebay.com
Mar 31
OK, so that’s my opinion, but I think you’ll agree. While Disney’s Family Fun website is full of great ideas and fun stuff, half your time is spent dodging the commercials! We discovered Activity TV on Comcast’s On Demand, and my youngest son (and his parents!) love it. You don’t need to have Comcast to get onto their website, but a high speed connection is necessary to play the videos.
If you don’t have high speed internet, you can still print the recipes and how-to’s because everything is detailed for each project….all the way to a list of supplies needed. You can even sort projects by difficulty and age level.
Some of the fun you’ll find:
~Making paper airplanes
~Recipes that kids love and can make themselves!
~Making jewelry
~Crafts of all kinds
~Fun Party Ideas
~Making Music (as in making your own instruments)
~Easy Room Projects
~Homemade Gift Ideas (and how-to, of course!)
~Games & Trivia
~Holiday Ideas and Projects
~Science Projects
~Cartooning
This has been one of our favorite sites to find fun projects for school. Hope you enjoy it, too!
Oct 9
What a great site for homeschoolers! This is a site that has fun math games and lots, lots, more that will help you find ways to plow through that brick wall that kids seem to build when we try to teach them new math concepts.
Most of my kids have loved math, not sure if it’s in the genes, or we just got lucky. Great curriculum like Bob Jones Math in the early years has always been our favorites, but mainly, we always have looked at math as a game. It’s probably more of a ‘boy thing’, but insert competition in the mix, and it always seemed to help get things done. Even getting them to take showers, which wasn’t their favorite thing to do (to say the least). At shower time, we’d pit them against each other and announce, “Who can take the fastest shower?” and remind them to use soap. Math was often done the same way. “Who can finish their math first?” and timing the math fact sheets to see if they could beat their previous time always helped us get out of those “I don’t wanna do it” ruts.
Let me know if you have other math sites or techniques that have helped you in teaching math!